Two Visitors

The first visitor of the day arrived with a thump on the window. 'Dammit!' I thought, 'Another fallen soldier.' I stepped outside to see who it was. Sure enough, he (or she) was laying awkwardly on the deck underneath the downstairs window which was casting a perfect reflection of the blue morning sky. It was none other than the Lousiana Waterthrush who I have been watching and listening to all season. (At least that is the best guess my identification efforts have allowed). He (or she) flew all the way up here from Central America this spring to nest and mate in the creek bank right behind this house. What a journey to accomplish just to fly into some stupid window. Well, it was alive but stunned, so I brought it inside to give it a protected place to try to recover. It was really out of it and its eyes looked strange. I left it alone to chill out for a few hours and then checked on it. It was looking much better so I picked it up to test its response. (S)he was responsive enough to fly out of the box and into the room. Crap. I gently grabbed it so I could take it outside, and in the process a few tail feathers came out. Dammit- that really sucked. I decided to let it go anyways. It knows what to do for itself better than I do. It flew up to a hemlock branch, and I am hoping for the best for that little beauty. I hope the tail feather thing doesn't throw off the flight equilibrium too much.





Visitor number 2 (pun intended) quickly mosied by me up at the land this afternoon when I was taking a sweaty break from mowing and reading an article about chainsaw sharpening. I noticed some odd movement by my feet and looked up from my reading in time to spot a shiny black dung beetle busily rolling a turd ball down to god-knows-where.





It made me think of Jessie because she had an epic dream about an oversized beetle. Well this beetle was not oversized, but the dookie turd it was rolling along was fairly epic. I immediately wondered: whose dookie is that? Could it be mine? That's kind of gross. But I doubt it's mine because I did not drop a turd up where that beetle was coming from. Maybe it was a dookie collaboration of the two beagles that have been running deer in big circles through the woods for the past week...

There is rarely a dull moment.